Pain is Sickness, Pain is the Cure
by Kindre Turnany
Summary: 'Do you want to save them' The voice is between Stiles' ears. It comes from neither the figure nor Stiles, but from somewhere in between. 'I can help you.'


My hop on the demon!Stiles bandwagon because it is the best bandwagon. Beta'd by Sasha and Nicole because they are fantastic and infinitely patient with my pestering and whining.

Title from Elton John's "Pain."

**~.x.~**

Everyone is going to die. Death's threat has become a constant in Beacon Hills, but now it's not an if, a maybe, or even a when. It's a pack of alphas beating his friends and almost-allies bloody. It's Derek dragging his left leg, Scott's arm hanging useless at his side, Lydia whimpering because she ran out of screams. It's the bone jutting out from the skin of Stiles' leg and the numb way he can almost ignore the pain now. It's the nothing he can do to help.

Stiles can't bear it. The pain will return if he moves, but despite, or maybe because of, his uselessness, Stiles is the only one free to act now. He has to try. The edges of his vision go black as he struggles to stand, and Stiles begs not to pass out. He thinks it's silent, but his babbling pushes through the haze of his senses.

"Please," he grunts against the pain in his leg. He has to do _something._

The darkness slides from the edge of his vision to the center. It stretches from a dark spot into a figure much like a man. Even though it wears Stiles' face, he can see another behind it, made of hard angles and sharp edges under a haze of obscurity. Its hand stretches out toward Stiles and pauses, waiting.

_Do you want to save them?_ The voice is between Stiles' ears. It comes from neither the figure nor Stiles, but from somewhere in between. _I can help you._

Of course Stiles wants to help, but there's a line between determined and desperate that he hasn't crossed yet. "I feel like accepting your help is the sort of thing people end up regretting."

The figure shakes its head. _I'm here because you already want me, not because you can't decide. _

"I don't even know—"

_You know what I am._ And he does. The figure's hand may not reach him, but its mind touches his. He doesn't know the name for it, but Stiles can sense that it takes a host, makes them powerful, and shares their body. It becomes a piece of them, but Stiles can't tell which pieces of himself would have to go to make room.

"What if we don't get along? I hear I can be pretty unbearable." The words taste like stalling. He can't afford to say yes, but he can't afford to let the power go either.

_There are ways to renegotiate. _It turns to where Scott fights for his life. _But I don't think you have time for that just now. _Then it motions for Stiles to face the entrance. _Here comes the cavalry, _it says as the door bursts open. Stiles' breath stops short when he sees his father. His heart stops with it when he sees his father tackled by a werewolf.

There's a line between determined and desperate, and Stiles just crossed it. He reaches out a hand for the shadow figure. When he touches it, the creature flows into him, fills him, becomes him. The world slows, or maybe he speeds up. The bone of his leg slides back through his skin and crashes into place. There's more inside Stiles than he knew was possible, more to the space around him than he could have sensed in a lifetime on his own.

And there's power.

While he can sense the power flowing though the others, it's his own that stuns him. Stiles has always been helpless. He couldn't save his mom from her disease. He couldn't save Scott from becoming a werewolf. He couldn't save Lydia from Peter. He couldn't save his father from Matt. He'd been lucky most of the time; someone else had power to help. Not this time. No one can save them because they're all overpowered by the alphas. All except Stiles who isn't worth the attention to kill him.

All except Stiles who starts by turning to the alpha who attacked his father and ripping out her throat. It isn't hard. One moment he's watching everyone die, the next he's got a fistful of flesh, and his enemy is dead. The second alpha goes down just as easily, and the one after that more so. Stiles has known for a while that he could kill if he had to; he just never imagined he'd have the power for it. He kills every last one though, and the thrill of it fills him.

"Stiles, what did you do?" Derek's nostrils flare as he speaks, and Stiles wonders if Derek is scenting him.

Deaton takes a cautious step toward Derek, away from Stiles. "I don't think that's Stiles."

"What kind of gratitude is that? I just saved your lives." The creature rolls its eyes at Stiles, but it must look like Stiles rolling his eyes at Deaton.

Derek's eyes flicker between Stiles and Deaton, moving faster and faster until they freeze on Stiles with a jolt as he growls. "Let him go." He stalks toward Stiles. "Whatever you are, just free him now before we find a way to force you out."

The creature inside Stiles laughs through his mouth. "I'm not going to hurt him," it says. "I may even help him."

Scott and the sheriff catch on then, and it's clear they side with Derek even though they know nothing about Stiles' passenger.

"Guys, calm down," Stiles raises his hands, but maybe that isn't such a good idea considering the blood and bits of fat and skin clinging to them. "I invited it in. It's okay."

Deaton perks up at that. At first Stiles doesn't understand why, but then he finds 'invitation necessary' in the pieces of the creature's memories that he can access.

"What does it feed on?" Deaton asks, and that's confirmation if nothing else. The creature's kind live in humans and feed on emotions. Stiles wonders for a moment what he could feel enough of to summon and feed a demon—

_Not a demon,_ it tells him, and—

_Basically a demon, _he responds.

When the creature uses his mouth to answer, "Pain and fear," Stiles thinks he didn't need to know even as he thinks that was pretty obvious. Guilt is in there too, along with other emotions humans made separate names for that are all the same to the creature. "He won't have to feel them anymore," it continues. "Doesn't that sound like something good?"

"People feel bad things for a reason," Stiles' dad says, and Stiles wonders how much he knows. What did the others say to get him here? Whatever it was, he's taking possession in stride.

"Look, it's not up to you," Stiles says, "To any of you. I made a choice."

"What you made was a mistake," Derek argues.

"So your bite is a gift and mine is, what, unpopular? Do you want to know how my last host died? _Happy. _She lived most of her life suffering from paranoid delusions and depression, but I took them away. I helped her live a normal life. Was that a mistake too?" Stiles feels the heat of blood in his cheeks. His fists are clenched and his throat tight around the creature's words.

"Stiles doesn't need you," Scott tells it.

Stiles laughs in his face. "Yes I do."

**~.x.~**

No one is going to die. Stiles grins as the passenger spins his body, admiring the jacket it has tried on in the mirror. He doesn't mind sharing. At first it was awkward, thinking of the body as his and the creature as an intruder. It's easier now to think of it as part of him. It fits snugly into the space it emptied for itself, and if it has the occasional request or an interest in fashion Stiles can't understand, he sees no harm in humoring a new piece of his own mind.

Besides, for as long as he keeps his demon around, no one is going to die. Stiles can protect them now.

_What do you think?_ It asks. _This one or the red?_

Stiles chuckles because the thing has been switching between the two jackets for a quarter hour now. _Just get both, dude._

The creature is happy, but also annoyed. It wants Stiles to care about the things it does, but it still thinks like its last host sometimes. They are getting better, starting to enjoy the same books, talking about werewolves, doing homework together. They even have the same handwriting now, though it's not what either of them started with.

_Come on,_ Stiles rolls his eyes and grabs the jackets and other clothes the demon picked out. _Are you really __**that**__ in-sync with your other hosts?_

_ Yes,_ it says. _This has been a particularly slow melding._

_ It's been less than two weeks, _Stiles points out as he piles the clothes in front of a cashier.

It doesn't respond. Stiles already knows bonding usually takes a handful of days, if not mere hours. Some part of him is rejecting the creature. He pays with a smile but leaves the store with a scowl. He wants the demon, wants it so fervently it hurts, except that it eats away the pain. That makes him laugh.

_I'm not trying to get rid of you,_ he promises.

It shrugs his shoulders for him. _Yes you are._

**~.x.~**

"If you're happy," Lydia asks, holding a carrot just far enough away from her lips to speak instead of eat, "Why are you always so angry?" She pops the carrot into her mouth. Stiles can't tell past the chewing if she's smirking, but the demon knows what she means.

"He's always been angry," It answers for him as Stiles ignores Lydia to concentrate on essay topics for History. "You just couldn't tell before."

"I was talking to _Stiles," _she says like there's supposed to be a difference.

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Anyway, who says an examination of pederasty across various cultures isn't historically relevant? It happened _in history."_

"What?"

"I am not even a little ready for my midterm, okay."

Lydia purses her lips and raises an eyebrow. "We were talking about your emotional state, not your creepy desire to be fondled by an older man."

The demon laughs, but Stiles clamps his lips shut to cut it off. He feels a jolt in his chest, a shattering between them. A gap opens, and he feels terror again at the thought of losing his passenger, but the demon reaches out and pulls him back, wrapping its dark arms around Stiles and making him safe.

"I used to be so afraid of hurting you," Stiles says when he can speak again. "I can't remember now why that was." He stands and leaves Lydia and the others eating their lunches. Tomorrow he'll probably sit back down with them, but for today he can't stand the sight of them. Some punk who thinks he's a badass shoulders Stiles as they pass in the hall, and Stiles smashes the guy's face against a locker.

The hallway empties quickly after that, and Stiles decides to leave before someone tries to give him detention. The demon takes Stiles away. One moment he sees blood dripping off the teenage moron's elbow as he tries to stem its flow from his nose, and the next he sees only trees and grass.

"Teleportation?" Stiles throws back his head and laughs. "This is so fucking awesome."

_It's not every day I find a host who dreams as big as you, _the demon says. _You'd think everyone would, but no, usually they focus so completely on one thing they miss out on a chance for the rest._

"Dude, just how much power do you have?"

_None, but my host can have..._ It pauses and chuckles out loud. _Quite a lot._

"You like having power," Stiles almost makes it a question but doesn't need to. He knows. He can feel in his chest how much the demon enjoys this, how much it wants something else to attack Beacon Hills just so he can destroy it. Stiles feels the same way, and it binds them closer. "Will we still think separately," Stiles asks, "When it's complete?"

_Probably, but it will be easier to access each other's thoughts, so we won't have as much to say and will likely begin responding the same way to things._

"Like instead of you laughing and me wanting to punch you in my face, we'll both tell Lydia to shove her pretty mouth up her pretty ass?"

_I like to think we'll come up with something witty to say._

Stiles holds his arms out, lifting fallen leaves from the ground. "That's why I like you." He spins, and the leaves spin with him.

_Maybe you should tell that to the part of you that hates me. _It means the part of Stiles rejecting the demon.

_I wouldn't worry about it, _Stiles speaks only in his mind this time. _Part of me hates __**me**__ too. _He shrugs and lets the leaves fall.

**~.x.~**

Concern paints his father's face an ugly shade. It deepens the creases in his skin and weighs him down. "This isn't you, Stiles," he says. The worst part is he believes it. This isn't his son, it's just a demon, and banishing the demon will save his son.

Stiles tries to stifle the laughter for his father's benefit. "Dad, the fucking demon told me _not to do it." _He can't hold it back; the laughter bursts out with enough force to double Stiles over and leave him slapping his leg.

Everyone keeps telling him to smile more. This isn't what they mean.

"Even if he was a shifter, he was an innocent." The words are strained. "He never hurt anyone."

"Yet," Stiles corrects, holding up a finger. This shifter hadn't been the first supernatural to come to Beacon Hills since Stiles got his demon, and he wouldn't be the last.

"You don't know that. You can't."

"Yes I can. That's what they always do. They come to town looking for something, and then they start murdering people. Well, I guess sometimes they start off in town and have to wait around for motive and means to find them." Stiles scowls because he's sick of people trying to kill him and his friends.

"You mean the way you did?" He voice is hard, and Stiles remembers his father is supposed to arrest killers.

"It was defense, Dad, not a crazy, vendetta-based murder spree." Stiles rolls his eyes, and the demon tells him it's not defense if there was no attack. The gap between them stretches again.

"How many people have you killed? How many are you going to kill? Tell me, when will it be enough for you?"

Something foreign boils out of the gap, and it whispers his mother's name. Stiles hasn't thought of her death in a long time. He remembers his guilt and adds her to the list of his kills. Then he turns his eyes to his father's and sneers. "When there's no one left."  
His father tries to grab hold of Stiles, but he pushes him away. "Don't touch me. Don't ever fucking touch me," he screams at his father. He pushes again, and his father hits the wall with a crack and a thud much louder than either should be. _Don't ever fucking leave me, _he screams at his demon as it recoils. _You're a literal fucking monster. Where do you get off thinking __**I'm **__not good enough?_

_That's not the kind of good I meant, _it tells him as it calls for an ambulance.

His father moans on the floor, and Stiles demands, "Didn't I ask you for any sort of healing power?"

_Only for yourself. _It checks his father's pulse and tries to wake him. _He'll survive, but he's probably got a concussion, if not something worse. You should be more careful. And tell the doctors you startled him and he fell backward. _

Stiles nods even though there's no one to see it.

**~.x.~**

_They tried to exorcise me while you were asleep, _the demon says when Stiles wakes up. _Again. _

They're in class, apparently—econ—so Stiles doesn't answer aloud, just groans mentally because his friends are idiots. _How long ago? _He asks because he can't even tell how long he slept this time.

_Last night. We were both asleep when they tried it._

_ You didn't have to hurt them, did you? _It doesn't worry Stiles as much as it used to, but he asks anyway. He doesn't _want_ them hurt. He just doesn't see much point in worrying about people who hate him as much as they do.

_Only a little, and only the ones who could heal quickly. _It offers Stiles a snippet of memory, but he brushes it aside.

_Why do you care about them? _Stiles fiddles with his pencil as Finstock rants about absolutely nothing anyone wants to hear.

_Because you do. _

Stiles does care, but not the way the creature does. It cares... the way he used to. If he concentrates, Stiles understands that it feels his full spectrum of emotions, including the ones it eats, but that shouldn't affect anything 'positive' like love or friendship. Nothing the demon does should have made Stiles care less about his friends either, but it had. Or maybe it just opened his eyes. He used to idolize them even as he worried about them. Without the worry, maybe things balanced out.

_Fuck it, _Stiles thinks, more for his benefit than the demon's. _I'm going back to sleep._ He doesn't want to deal with this right now. The demon can watch his body.

**~.x.~**

Stiles growls into his pillow. He can't feel loneliness anymore, but apparently he still needs to interact with people to feel... right.

_You __**are**__ still human, _the demon reminds him.

_Maybe I don't want to be. _

It chuckles with his voice. _Of course you don't. You haven't wanted to be human since long before I met you._

Stiles turns his voice to his own purpose. "Fuck you, Mr. Know-it-all. Aren't we supposed to be bonded by now?"

_We're not going to bond, Stiles. We can't make it work._

_ No, _It's just a thought, but it's also a scream, _You're just not trying hard enough, you piece of shit. Make it work._

_ I can't. I tried._

Stiles screams out loud this time, into his pillow. He ends it with his teeth, sinking them into the pillow as the demon waits him out.

_I told you, I'm not really a demon. Or at least not a very good one._

Demons eat things like love and happiness. Demons destroy their hosts and turn them into monsters. Demons pull their hosts away from their family and friends and make them into meat-suits, putting the hosts to sleep and using their bodies as they please.

Stiles laughs at the creature's thoughts and thinks right back. He thinks about who and what he was before the demon, and the way it's changed him. His friends hate him almost as much as he hates them. He sleeps through as much time as possible and spends his few waking moments hurting people or screaming at them. Maybe this demon doesn't eat them, but it still found a way to take Stiles' love and happiness from him.

"You're all I have left," he tells it. "You're _my_ fucking _demon, _and I will keep you."

_If you know you're a monster, why don't you change?_

"Why don't _you_ change me?"

_I tried. I can't._

_ I can't believe I got a demon with a fucking conscience. _Stiles sneers against the now-damp cotton of his pillowcase. _Is it still leftover from your last host? After all this time?_

The creature shakes his head. _It's yours, _it says with a wry grin. _It hurts you, so only I can feel it now. _It pauses. _Everything hurts you._

Stiles knows it means more than that. He noticed a long time ago when he started hurting again. Even if he never asked the demon why, Stiles understands. It can only eat so much. Neither of them chooses what slips through, but so far it hasn't been the worst parts.

_There's a way though, _Stiles thinks. He finds the solution in his passenger's memories, and it's so simple it hurts.

_It's not what you want._ Its voice, even as a figment of Stiles' imagination, trembles.

_ Yes it is._

**~.x.~**

Stiles doesn't cry at his father's funeral. The demon does that for him, and he hates the way his face heats up and his nose runs. He keeps telling the demon to stop, that's it's too uncomfortable, but it ignores him. A son is supposed to cry at his father's funeral. Everyone who doesn't matter buys it.

The pack—and somehow in their vendetta against Stiles, they became a real pack—doesn't buy a thing. They come and act like his friends, but Stiles knows better. They think turning his back still means he can't see them, and he catches their feelings on their faces and in their distant voices. Scott thinks he can save Stiles. Allison doesn't. Jackson doesn't care. Lydia remembers that they saved Jackson, so she knows they can save Stiles. Erica wants to believe but can't quite, not after all this time. Isaac worries what Stiles will be even without the demon. Boyd is just afraid of what Stiles will do now. Derek can't decide if his father's death will save or destroy Stiles. Peter keeps laughing.

_Do they think I killed him? _Stiles asks more to stave off boredom than anything. He hasn't been able to sleep recently or he'd tune the whole thing out.

_Do you?_

Stiles would roll his eyes, but the creature stops him. It has to keep up appearances. _You tell me, Oh holder of my guilt._

_ Stress killed him. Of course you blame yourself._

_ That's stupid. _Stiles turns to where Scott and Allison argue quietly at the edge of the gathering. _It means they don't blame me._

_ No, _the demon tells him, _They blame me._

_ They always blame you. _Peter is watching Scott and Allison too, but he turns to Stiles when they stop. Peter grins, and when he's sure no one is looking, Stiles grins back.

The demon takes control again after that. It keeps Stiles' face teary and broken. It makes a speech in Stiles' name with Stiles' voice, and nearly everyone believes it. These days, it plays better Stiles than Stiles does. When everything is done and Stiles' father is in the ground, Derek approaches him. Peter follows even though Derek clearly tells him not to.

"Is this enough?" Derek asks, and his voice is soft in a way Stiles would never have thought to imagine it. "Are you ready to stop now?"

_Oh, yes, _Stiles remembers, _His family is dead too._

No one is around to hear, so the demon lets Stiles laugh. "No."

Peter pats his nephew's shoulder. "I did tell you so."

Derek freezes with his eyes on Peter. After a moment he slowly, slowly turns to Stiles, and Stiles can see worlds crashing down in Derek's eyes. "You don't care, do you?"

Stiles shrugs. "I don't hurt anymore." It's not true, not entirely. But he doesn't hurt the way Derek does or the way the creature pretended to.

"He was your father." Derek's voice deepens, loses its steadiness.

"I know."

Then from his own mouth, "No you don't."

Stiles frowns because they had agreed the demon would only contradict him in their thoughts, not out loud for people to hear.

"But you can." The demon opens something or closes its mouth. Sorrow, grief, guilt, anxiety, terror, agony, despair, all the things Stiles is supposed to be safe from now are free. For a brief moment he thinks, _My father, he's my __**father,**__ and he's dead because of me,_and as he screams with the pain of that, the rest pours over him.

The emotion crushes him.

It can't have been this bad before. _It was, _the demon promises as Stiles falls forward to his knees, trying to hold himself together. _You just don't remember how to deal with it. _Stiles screams and shoves a fist in his mouth to make it stop. His teeth bite down until he tastes blood. He remembers being angry and bored and occasionally cheerful, but he can't feel that now. There is too little to register over the torrent of fear, pain, grief, and guilt. They make up all of Stiles now, beat down at everything he thought he was until he can only wish for death to make it stop.

He realizes his hands are both on the ground in front of him, holding him up. He's screaming, "Make it stop. Make it stop," and the others have rushed over too. They're saying something, but he can't make out what. Everything inside him blocks the outside. There's too much to feel through.

_How the fuck did I function like this? _He asks the demon.

_You were stronger then._

He wants to tell it, _Like fuck I was, _but the demon is right. Stiles can't take this now, but he used to. He used to feel this way every day.

"I don't want it," he shouts.

"Stiles," Scott bends down in front of him. "Please, we can help."

They don't hate him, Stiles realizes. They never hated him. They hate the demon, not because they believe it's the only one hurting and killing people, but because they know it changed him. Stiles never cared if it made him a monster. How had he not cared?

_Because it hurt to care._

Stiles snarls at the demon.

_I told you, everything hurts you. The more I took, the more you hurt, and the more I had to take._

"Then why give it back now?" His voice wavers, hiccups, catches on itself, and stretches over the words. He wheezes and trembles.

_This is the end. We've gone as far as we can and never bonded._

"You can't leave me," Stiles cries. "I won't let you."

Scott tries to reach out to Stiles, but he pushes him back hard enough to send him flying. "Don't touch me," he screams, and it echoes back at him in his memory.

_Don't ever fucking touch me, _he remembers cracking his father's skull. _Don't ever fucking leave me, _he remembers binding the demon to the last holding post in his mind, and he remembers it being shaped exactly like his father.

_You can't hold me here anymore, _the demon says.

"I can. I can do anything. You gave it to me, remember, you piece of shit. You can't leave me unless I let you." Stiles keeps going, babbling like he used to before the demon, but angrier, more threatening, and a thousand times more cruel.

_I know. But you don't want me inside you._

It stretches across the widening gap and shows Stiles what it means. The creature could just leave, but that is what it wants, not what Stiles wants. It recalls for Stiles the night he realized that he was a monster and that the creature couldn't fix him. The demon reminds Stiles of a way to change himself. Then it jerks Stiles across the gap to show him the misery in what he thinks he wants, the suffering, the terror, the pain, the endless hunger, and end that never comes.

As it lets Stiles return to his side of the gap, it asks, _Is that really what you want?_

"No." He curls in on himself. "But it's better than what I have."

_Funny, that's what I was going to say about my end of this. But they never want it when I do, not in the centuries I've been looking. So I'll take what I can get._

Stiles laughs only to choke on the bitterness in it. "Do it," he orders, and they both pull away, widening the gap. The demon pushes him not just away, but out. The pain fades as they move further apart. Everything fades. In the last moment, Stiles realizes the creature was right. This isn't what he wants, but it laughs at him and forces him out with one final push.

The demon stands, and Stiles' body goes with it. Stiles stands, and Lydia gasps that she can see _it. _They force his mind and body further apart, all except Peter who finally looks sad. Stiles turns and flies away because he can feel the pull of desperation, but it isn't from his body. It's far away, and he can't resist its call.

The creature was right. It wasn't really a demon at all. It was a boy like him desperate enough to kill itself the same way Stiles had. At the end of the pull, Stiles finds a human crouched on the ground, surrounded by corpses to avenge. He holds out his hand and says, _I can help you_.

The human looks up at Stiles through a stream of tears and asks, "Can you make everyone pay?"

_Yes_, he says, as the human takes his hand. _Everyone is going to die.  
_


End file.
